Valve's 'Counter-Strike: Global Offensive' coming to Mac in 2012

A sequel to Counter-Strike, still one of the most popular online games 12 years after it launched, will arrive in early 2012 on Mac OS X as well as Windows with "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive."

The creator of the competitive first-person shooter, Valve, formally announced the game on Friday, revealing that the title will come to its Steam digital distribution service next year. Steam became available on the Mac last year, bringing with it hit titles like Team Fortress 2 and Portal.

In addition to Mac OS X, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will also be available on Steam on the PC, and via the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade. The new Counter-Strike will feature new maps, characters and weapons, as well as updated versions of original levels like "de_dust."

In addition, Global Offensive is set to introduce new gameplay modes, matchmaking, leaderboards and more. The first Counter-Strike launched as a beta modification of the Half-Life game engine in August of 1999.

"Counter-Strike took the gaming industry by surprise when the unlikely MOD became the most played online PC action game in the world almost immediately after its release in August 1999," said Doug Lombardi, vice president of marketing at Valve.

"For the past 12 years, it has continued to be one of the most-played games in the world, headline competitive gaming tournaments and selling over 25 million units worldwide across the franchise. CS: GO promises to expand on CS' award-winning gameplay and deliver it to gamers on the PC as well as the next-gen consoles and the Mac."

The new Counter-Strike is being developed by Valve in cooperation with Seattle-based Hidden Path entertainment. It will be playable at this year's PAX Prime Expo, along with the Eurogamer Expo 2011.

While waiting for Global Offensive to launch in early 2012, gamers on the Mac can get their Counter-Strike fix right now with Counter-Strike: Source, available on Steam for $19.99. The online team-based game launched in 2004 running on the Source engine that powers other Valve titles like Half-Life 2.

Matchmaking = fail These guys forgot that the game lived so many years cause the support of a lot of clans around the world besides the hardcore gamer + the leagues.
How are they supposed to play together using matchmaking??
I am glad to hear they are coming back but I am sorry they are following activation/ea steps..

And matchmaking has always been a part of PC and console games as of late... It's just PC users will get the server browser which valve always has so clans will have no problem. I'm looking forward to this and Dota 2!

And matchmaking has always been a part of PC and console games as of late... It's just PC users will get the server browser which valve always has so clans will have no problem. I'm looking forward to this and Dota 2!

Sorry to not share your view, been playing long enough to point out why is bad. It came with Modern Warfare 2 cause that game was a port from the gaming consoles to pc. You don't even need to be in a clan to suffer from matchmaking.
I have almost 10 years playing FPS on Mac with game titles like Soldier of Fortune, Ghost Recon Desert Siege, Raven Shield when we used to hang in Game Ranger. And got used to play with people from different countries like Australia, NZ, UK, Germany, Latin America, USA & Canada. One flaw matchmaking has is that almost make impossible or too troublesome to play with your friends since the matchmaking will force you most of the times to play on a server where you can get a good ping.

When I had MW2 I used to be forced to join a server in latin america and nobody I know. It is like trying to play with your buddies in World of Tanks unless you spend a good amount of bucks on it.

Hopefully will have a server list that "works" since that is another problem with ranked or unranked servers but time will tell.

Some of you won't consider matchmaking a problem, you are lone wolfs. But when you get used to play with a team for fun or in leagues like I got used... it matters. My clan has more than a hundred members active and we are just watching how the old days of good games are gone. One of our last hopes sit with Red Orchestra.

I can understand battling on other planets, different worlds, etc., but another Cold War/Post Cold War campaign? Seriously?

Do we have to wait until fighting Terrorism has gotten beyond tiring for this crap type of game campaign to stop being produced?

Our DNA is written to kill. It is our nature to kill everything. Just take a look at human history. Always been that way and probably will be until our end as a race. You can deny it, it is your right but remember that while you are eating meat or any animal, buy products from a third world country that exploit workers you are supporting violence un unfairness.

War, especially virtual war games and killing enemies on your large LCD screen from the comfort of your own home is a hell of a lot of fun. It's only a game afterall. There are plenty of other game genres for somebody to choose from if they suffer from psychological issues and mental health problems which prevents these people from having any fun.

You should check out the Smurfs game for the iPad, that's probably right up your alley.

I happen to find the ideas of anti-war people to be naive, offensive and disgusting.

Sorry to not share your view, been playing long enough to point out why is bad. It came with Modern Warfare 2 cause that game was a port from the gaming consoles to pc. You don't even need to be in a clan to suffer from matchmaking.
I have almost 10 years playing FPS on Mac with game titles like Soldier of Fortune, Ghost Recon Desert Siege, Raven Shield when we used to hang in Game Ranger. And got used to play with people from different countries like Australia, NZ, UK, Germany, Latin America, USA & Canada. One flaw matchmaking has is that almost make impossible or too troublesome to play with your friends since the matchmaking will force you most of the times to play on a server where you can get a good ping.

When I had MW2 I used to be forced to join a server in latin america and nobody I know. It is like trying to play with your buddies in World of Tanks unless you spend a good amount of bucks on it.

Hopefully will have a server list that "works" since that is another problem with ranked or unranked servers but time will tell.

Some of you won't consider matchmaking a problem, you are lone wolfs. But when you get used to play with a team for fun or in leagues like I got used... it matters. My clan has more than a hundred members active and we are just watching how the old days of good games are gone. One of our last hopes sit with Red Orchestra.

I personally don't mind using matchmaking when I'm bored at home and looking for a quick start game. Valve I find is able to make a server list work as they do it in every multiplayer game they create (except Portal 2 which only is coop so no list is needed).

MW2 was one of the reason so many PC players got angry with it due to the lack of a server list but it was brought back in Black Ops. Developers of PC titles know server lists are important and Valve is big on this. I would be absolutely surprised if Valve did not include one.

Our DNA is written to kill. It is our nature to kill everything. Just take a look at human history. Always been that way and probably will be until our end as a race. You can deny it, it is your right but remember that while you are eating meat or any animal, buy products from a third world country that exploit workers you are supporting violence un unfairness.

What a game can possibly do to make us worst as a race?

It is our nature to evolve. Civilization was a step away from the necessity to be Hunter/Gatherers.

If you noticed I prefaced my statement specifically towards Military Industrial Complex Circle Jerk Games, not Self-preservation against Aliens and other World Campaigns.

They're boring as hell, is my point. Hell, the games of the mid-90s were far more entertaining when we had half-ass graphic capabilities.

I enjoyed Marathon, Quake, Doom, etc., like the rest of anyone whose ever played a first person shooter, but how many f'n WWII, Terrorist, Cold War circle jerks do we really need?

Where are the new frontier games that aren't about dealing with massive extermination, but serious strategy campaigns that require building colonies allowing one to switch from 3rd person back to first person immersion?

CS was the first computer game I've ever played. Even before mine sweeper or solitaire. I played it in a lan cafe even before I had a PC. My second one was RA 2. I don't play that much now, but its awesome to know that the game is still alive.

NRA is a glorification of war and death. They buy real guns and shoot real people (and occasionally animals). Counter strike was the reason I got into computers. The reason I started researching what the hell TCP/ IP was. How to mod the game, how to change skins, sounds, how to create sprays in paint. What processor / ram / hard disk requirements were. Ventrillo, xfire, VoiP Etc. I can go on and on and on.

Not to mention the history exams I passed after playing age of empires and learning about huns, Joan D'Arc (and doing additional research, but I already had a vague idea about who those people were).

Plus strategy and critical thinking and reaction time.

Video games, even the violent ones, are much more helpful and beneficial than a lot of other activities kids can spend their time on.

EDIT: Oh and not to mention people I've talked to all around the world playing clan matches against people from UK and Australia and China. You can't get that kind of reach when you are 13-14 in any other activity.

Valve have been very good at supporting the Mac. It's surprising how many games on Steam are dual-platform. I would prefer they also released them on the MAS, though I don't expect them to.

Not really. They have ported their games to Mac, sure, and they run pretty well most of the time, but they don't have nearly the kind of cross-platform support that even Microsoft gives, let alone a game dev like Blizzard. Namely, just the retail games are available. The Source SDK is still, and with no hint that this will ever change, Windows-only. Yes, the platform known for it's creative users, Valve won't port it's creative tools.

NRA is a glorification of war and death. They buy real guns and shoot real people (and occasionally animals).

Um, what?

NRA are responsible law-abiding gun owners who run gun safety courses and try to keep the government from having a monopoly on firearms. Not that I support them, GOA FTW.

If you want to talk about who buys real guns to shoot people, look at our government. Obama is currently killing people in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and lord knows where else. 168 children have already been confirmed killed by drone attacks. THOUSANDS of non-combatants, too. All in illegal, undeclared wars of aggression. The NRA isn't piloting those drones.

They're boring as hell, is my point. Hell, the games of the mid-90s were far more entertaining when we had half-ass graphic capabilities.

Games back then were quicker to develop. Although people may still enjoy good gameplay at the expense of graphics, there's a certain quality bar developers need to hit to be relevant. Hitting that quality bar as well as producing a good game that isn't completely derivative can take a fairly hefty budget and long turnaround time.

I remember enjoying older games more too but when I revisit them, there were still just a handful of really great games. They did seem to focus more on the experience though as if the developers had a passion for games. Modern studios just seem to focus too much on the bottom line and the talent is so diverse that it's often not a single artist's vision. Even with dozens of games studios, these days you can only really hope to get 5 good games at most per year and some of those will mostly be marketing machines.

Battlefield and Call of Duty for example are at this stage money trees. Modern Warfare 1 was innovative. There are studios that put in the effort like Bioware and we'll see what Respawn come up with but there could certainly be more effort into immersive gaming vs shallow run-and-gun gaming.

Valve has taken a turn for the worse here because Newell said they were focusing on games as a service now. This is fine for desktop software but not games. Things like Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead have such basic mechanics, they just can't have longevity.

I don't want to see games end up being a bunch of copy-cat shooters that take a year to make and then developers just add levels, characters and outfits. I like the short development times but I'd rather see shorter immersive games that give you a reason to play them instead of giving you a time-filler when you have nothing better to do.

They're boring as hell, is my point. Hell, the games of the mid-90s were far more entertaining when we had half-ass graphic capabilities.

I enjoyed Marathon, Quake, Doom, etc., like the rest of anyone whose ever played a first person shooter, but how many f'n WWII, Terrorist, Cold War circle jerks do we really need?

I can see from your comment you've never played counterstrike, but the mod has always been kind of campy and the whole terrorist/counter-terrorist theme isn't supposed to be taken seriously. It's not some pro-America propaganda game. There's no campaign. If you don't like it, you don't have to play it. Tons of indie developers make low graphic games focused on pure gameplay; vote with your dollars.